The HD 3850 AGP User Experience

Ok, you are lucky since I still had the modified BIOS for the ICeQ with the ATi DeviceID and the fan settings fixed, download Winflash 2.0.1.2 and give me your email so I can send you the BIOS, once you got everything, open Winflash with Administrator Rights (On Vista) and then look for the BIOS file and click flash, and that's it, but before rebooting make sure to remove all ATi Software so you can reboot without issues, also download the latest official drivers for the HD 3850. This BIOS will clock your card at HD 3870 stock speed except RAM which will run at 1.94GHz and the fan speed is increased slighly to improve it's cooling performance, the overdrive feature will not work after this but you can use other utilities like ATi Tool etc, and GPU-Z or Rivatuner to monitor the GPU usage.
 
Awesome thanks man, I pm'd you my email. Hopefully this will fix the GPU usage issues that I've been having.
 
I sent you the BIOS, just download Winflash 2.0.1.2 and also use GPU-Z to back up your original BIOS just in case that you have to RMA for some other issues, a card with different BIOS will not receive warranty repairs under any company.
 
evolucion8, do you mean that if I flashed the BIOS of my HIS HD3850 IceQ3 same like you I would not be able to overclock it at all? Even with ATI Tools or RivaTuner?
 
Nope, I meant that if you flash your card, you won't be able to overclock or monitor GPU usage with the Overdrive feature in Catalyst Control Center, but you should be able to overclock it using Rivatuner or ATi Tool.
 
Alright I'm up and running with the new BIOS. Things are running much better for me now, which narrows my problem down to an issue with the hotfix and XP. Seeing as how the only two things I've read to fix performance have been upgrading to vista or as I've just learned, swapping out the BIOS and running dif drivers. Thanks Evolucion!
 
Just wanted to reply and say I bought the PowerColor 3850 and pretty happy so far. It was an improvement (vs 1950GT) in WoW and it opened up 8x multisample for me in the settings. CCC wont let me OC it and I havent played with any of the bios's yet. but may.

My CPU usage only sits at 70-80% while gaming and 50% on the GPU. with a low of 25fps in some areas and 50+ fps in other. Thats with everything cranked (including AA) at 1600x1200.

I think once I start OC'ing the CPU some I might get more out of it.

BTW my 475w Entermax didnt make it 10 min with this vid card. It promptly shut down on me a couple times. Made an emergency drive to Frys (2 hour trip) to buy a 650w Corsair and everything is goooood.
 
Volken said:
Alright I'm up and running with the new BIOS. Things are running much better for me now, which narrows my problem down to an issue with the hotfix and XP. Seeing as how the only two things I've read to fix performance have been upgrading to vista or as I've just learned, swapping out the BIOS and running dif drivers. Thanks Evolucion!
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I'm glad that everything is working fine, enjoy your card!! I'm enjoying my card too thanks to that fix that I figured it out and made with some investigation and advise from others in Guru3D and here.
 
MrValentine said:
Just wanted to reply and say I bought the PowerColor 3850 and pretty happy so far. It was an improvement (vs 1950GT) in WoW and it opened up 8x multisample for me in the settings. CCC wont let me OC it and I havent played with any of the bios's yet. but may.

My CPU usage only sits at 70-80% while gaming and 50% on the GPU. with a low of 25fps in some areas and 50+ fps in other. Thats with everything cranked (including AA) at 1600x1200.

I think once I start OC'ing the CPU some I might get more out of it.

BTW my 475w Entermax didnt make it 10 min with this vid card. It promptly shut down on me a couple times. Made an emergency drive to Frys (2 hour trip) to buy a 650w Corsair and everything is goooood.
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Nice, I came from a X1950XT and the jump was noticeable in GPU intensive tasks, that PSU was a bit weak for that card and that might explain why it wasn't performing strong enough, but WoW is not necessarily a GPU intensive game, but with 8X Anti Aliasing which is done in shaders puts a pretty load on the GPU.
 
toprock23 said:
problem fixed: i bought an accelero rev.2 cooler and now i am able to overclock! no more vpu issues. i suggest that anyone buying a 3850 agp dump the stock cooler and buy an aftermarket one.
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Is there really an advantage to replacing the cooler? Seems like an awful lot of trouble for minimal return.

And what's the point of flashing the BIOS that everyone's going on about?
 
Terpfen said:
Is there really an advantage to replacing the cooler? Seems like an awful lot of trouble for minimal return.

And what's the point of flashing the BIOS that everyone's going on about?
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Replacing the cooler from a single slot solution like the Sapphire one's give you lots of things in return, but Powercolor, HIS or Visiontek have nice coolers, so replacing them will give you minimal returns.

Flashing the BIOS to our HIS IceQ cards allowed us to ran the card at HD 3870 speeds, increase the cooling efficiency thanks to slighly higher RPM's, activated Powerplay to save power and reduce heat emissions and changed the DeviceID to allow us to use the Official Drivers instead of the Unstable Hotfix, of course, I did all those modifications to reduce any incompatability with our cards since the BIOS is from ATi.

The factory BIOS from HIS has a higher limits with Overdrive than the ATi original one, but it doesn't matter since we can set the speed with the RBE, doesn't have Powerplay activated, the RPM's in the cooling system are too low and made our cards to reach the 90'C realm and we had to use the Hotfix driver which causes unstability issues or performance issues with games. I should be able to modify another BIOS for another card like Sapphire or Powercolor, but I would need the original one as a reference.
 
hey guys sorry for the delay. the aftermarket cooler for me was well worth the buy. for one, i couldn't stand the squealing sound of the stock cooler. it drove me crazy. my load temps on furmark was hitting 83-84C. now with accelero S1, im getting 48-49C with a 120mm fan strapped on it. my idle temps are 42-43. its real easy to install and had to be careful of not denting the fins. my clocks right now are pretty conservative 700/900. i get vpu errors if i go past that, yea i spoke too soon. that's alright tho, i think my power supply is def limiting cause i see no artifacts at 780 core just before crashing 3dmark. id quote some of u guys but im new here.

specs: Asus A8V
AMD64 X2 3800 @ 2.8
Sapphire 3850agp
Corsair DDR400 2GB
Antec smart power 500w (low quality and it sucks)
 
evolucion8 said:
Replacing the cooler from a single slot solution like the Sapphire one's give you lots of things in return, but Powercolor, HIS or Visiontek have nice coolers, so replacing them will give you minimal returns.
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My Sapphire card has always been cool and quiet even in gaming. What's so wrong with the cooler that it's the only brand that's considered replacement-worthy?

Flashing the BIOS to our HIS IceQ cards allowed us to ran the card at HD 3870 speeds, increase the cooling efficiency thanks to slighly higher RPM's, activated Powerplay to save power and reduce heat emissions and changed the DeviceID to allow us to use the Official Drivers instead of the Unstable Hotfix, of course, I did all those modifications to reduce any incompatability with our cards since the BIOS is from ATi.

The factory BIOS from HIS has a higher limits with Overdrive than the ATi original one, but it doesn't matter since we can set the speed with the RBE, doesn't have Powerplay activated, the RPM's in the cooling system are too low and made our cards to reach the 90'C realm and we had to use the Hotfix driver which causes unstability issues or performance issues with games. I should be able to modify another BIOS for another card like Sapphire or Powercolor, but I would need the original one as a reference.
Click to expand...

Now, this sounds useful. I'm hoping for a Sapphire version.
 
Terpfen said:
My Sapphire card has always been cool and quiet even in gaming. What's so wrong with the cooler that it's the only brand that's considered replacement-worthy?
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Stock heatsink on the sapphire card is still complete crap imo. I've maxed out the fan speed through bios to 100% and the card still goes up to 80 C under load.
 
Strangely enough, when I discovered that my card was incompatible with my old Coolmax CUG 700W PSU, I used an Antec SmartPower 500 and worked fine, I used it for two weeks and never had a single issue with it, but of course my system is considerably less power hungry than yours.
 
wow, this thread is still very active. needless to say i still have my 3850 running and don't plan on upgrading to a new rig any time soon. :D

i might pickup a second one to keep as a spare this weekend seeing as how they are dirt cheap now.
 
DeadSkull said:
Stock heatsink on the sapphire card is still complete crap imo. I've maxed out the fan speed through bios to 100% and the card still goes up to 80 C under load.
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Either way, replacing the cooler is fairly extreme, IMO.
 
DeadSkull said:
Stock heatsink on the sapphire card is still complete crap imo. I've maxed out the fan speed through bios to 100% and the card still goes up to 80 C under load.
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after reading the last few pages of this thread I got the itch to find a working version of ATI tray tools that would allow me to change my fan speed to 100%. after changing the fan speed to 100% my temps hit an average low of 44C on idle and 60C after a 30min game of UT3. perhaps you need better case airflow?
 
Goes up to 90C here.
Current case flow is 110 cfm in, 150 cfm out. Before when I tried @ the card to max I had a 190 cfm fan ghetto rigged in the back of the case so it would blow cool air from outside onto the cards fan intake. Still only managed to lower furs maximum temp by around 2C. I'm guessing someone did a **** job of applying the thermal compound during final assembly.
 
Not yet, I've been trying to contact my friend to send me a copy of his BIOS, buthe has been working too much lately, if someone here could extract a copy of the Sapphire original BIOS through GPU-Z and send me a private message, so I can send him/her my email to get the file, the process will be much faster, volunteers anyone?
 
I just figured out how to save the bios out... So, Ill volunteer... I have a standard Sapphire 3850... oh it maybe overclocked right now ....
 
Use GPU-Z to save the BIOS to a file, I'll give you my email address in a private message, so you can send it to me through your email.
 
Yeah, I will pm my email, I will verify it's checksum to make sure is not incomplete, did you used the last version of GPU-Z? Make sure it is.
 
nah, ati flash to download stock bios of the card. Is there a way to get it with gpu-z?
 
I did two BIOS versions for the Sapphire card, I took the original Sapphire BIOS (Thanks to LordVampire), and modified the DeviceID and Vendor ID and increased the RPM in fans so it can run cooler. The second BIOS is the ATi BIOS reference (The same I'm using for my HIS card), and modified the values for the Sapphire cooling system which is also improved for better cooling.

I used the latest RBE version and I don't know if it managed to change the DeviceID and Vendor ID of the original BIOS since the previous version of RBE couldn't change those values with my original HIS BIOS (Even when the program said it did), but the other values were changed. So the only way to prove it is flashing it with a Sapphire card, rebooting and checking it with GPU-Z or Everest, if they are the same as before, then it couldn't be changed, but then the second BIOS comes to the rescue which has the DeviceID and Vendor ID of ATi, with the improved fan profile for the stock cooling of Sapphire.

The advantage of the first BIOS (If the DeviceID works) is that it's the same BIOS with different DeviceID and Vendor ID with improved fan profile and shouldn't have issues with Overdrive. The advantage of the second BIOS is that is more proven for the fact that the DeviceID and VendorID are working and has the improved fan profile for the stock Sapphire, but the Overdrive feature probably will not work. I will check later to see if the new RBE which I'm using can change original BIOS DeviceID/VendorID.

First BIOS Name: Sapphire Improved BIOS
Second BIOS Name: ATi BIOS for Sapphire
 
Hi all,

I own a Sapphire 3850 AGP.
As I assume most of you, overclocking the card using Ati Tray Tools is impossible, changing the clocks even the slightest bit resets the computer, and the clocks it shows aren't correct at all.
I can use Ati's CCC to o/c the gpu to 720 fine, can't recall memory, but I don't know if ccc increases clock speed continually or only when starting a 3d app ( like tray tools), and even then there's no way I know of to verify if it does indeed increase clock speeds at all :confused:
And I'm sure I can squeeze more out of this card, the GPU is after all identical to the one in the 3870 so I should be able to at least obtain 3870 stock gpu speed.
What programs are known to work with this card? As I am on watercooling, temps are the least of my worries :D
 
what version of ati tray tools are you using? i had to try several version until it worked properly with my Sapphire card. i am using version 1.4.7.1193 and adjusting gpu/mem clocks work fine as well as the fan control but since you are on water then that is moot. also, what drivers are you using? i am on 8.7. i also do not use the CCC.
 
For starters try Rivatuner and see how far you can move up on your core / memory clocks before experiencing artifacts (white dots) or just vga shut downs in the most taxing games you own.
 
Update: I confirmed that editing the deviceID and VendorID with the original BIOS will not work, because the CCC would not recognize the card, may be there's some key or code inside, so the only BIOS which will work fine is the second option, ATi BIOS for Sapphire card. If anyone want to make their Sapphire or HIS card compatible with Official ATi drivers (No more Hotfix Hassle) let me know.
 
God_Of_Death said:
what version of ati tray tools are you using? i had to try several version until it worked properly with my Sapphire card. i am using version 1.4.7.1193 and adjusting gpu/mem clocks work fine as well as the fan control but since you are on water then that is moot. also, what drivers are you using? i am on 8.7. i also do not use the CCC.
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If I'm not mistaking I downloaded the latest version of tray tools, which didn't work.
I'm on 8.7 drivers as well.
So far, I am very impressed with this cards performance. Oblivion 1920x1200 HDR all details fully open + hi-res texture mods runs silky smooth. My 1950 Pro did 1280x1024 HDR medium details no mods and only barely smooth. Best of all is, the 1950 broke and they didn't have any 1950s left so I got the 3850 as replacement :D
I'll have a go with Rivatuner. I always thought that it's an nVidia- exclusive tool...
 
Great card. IMO the best option for a person who wants to keep their AGP8x machine and upgrade their GPU power.

I scored almost 10,000 benchmarks in the short time that I had a HD3840 AGP8x card with an E6600 CPU running at stock speeds.

With some tweaking I'm sure the card would have seen 11,000 benchmarks on 3dMark06.

Shortly after I got it I decided to upgrade my whole machine.

My best score before I upgraded: http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=7379960
 
Thank you for the BIOS for my HIS HD3850 IceQ3 video card evolucion8! After the flashing I can finally use official drivers from ATI and everything seems to be working very well. On the flashing day I also received a 6 pin to 8 pin PCI-E 2.0 adapter which has definitely made more space for stable overclocking. Now the core is running at 825MHz, meanwhile mem - at 2000MHz (effective).
 
Just reapplied the ceramic solution on the heatsink today, absolutely no temperature change at all either at idle or load. wth?
 
Great, but why GPU-Z reports the card as a HD 3870? I sent it to Terpfen and someone else (I don't remember his name) and the card still having the same HD 3850 name. Are you sure that you are using the same BIOS that I edited? It would be awesome if I'm able to rename my card as a HD 3870 IceQ 3 like you have, but I'm using Vista and it's called HD 3800 series
 
Hmmm are you just changing the device id on stock bios's and nothing else?
 
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